"Hold up your hands, Madrigal." Bob's tone brought swift obedience. Around the Mexican and on him were the ripped and torn fragments of a dummy man—made of a sack of oats, with flapping arms and a tangle of ropes. Bob had not felt sure but some attempt might be made on his life, and half in jest and half as a precaution, he and Noah had put this dummy overhead with a trip rope just inside the door. They knew the fright of something unexpected falling on an intruder would be more effective than a machine gun.
"Get up," Bob ordered, and the shaken Madrigal staggered to his feet, with his hands held stiffly straight up. "March out." Rogeen's decision had come quickly. He followed with the gun in close proximity to the Mexican's back.
Madrigal was ordered to pick up a hoe and a shovel, and then was marched along the water ditch toward the back of the field.
"Here." Bob ordered a stop. They were half a mile from the road, at the edge of the desert. The Mexican had recovered enough from his first fright to feel the cold clutch of another, surer danger. "Dig," ordered Bob. And the Mexican obeyed. "About two feet that way." Bob sat down on the bank of the water ditch and kept the digger covered. "Make it seven feet long," he ordered, coldly.
Slowly Madrigal dug and shovelled, and slowly but surely as the thing took shape, he saw what it was—a grave. His grave!
He glared wildly about as he paused for a breath.
"Hurry," came the insistent command.
Another shovelful, and he glanced up at the light. But the muzzle of the gun was level with the light! A wrong move and he knew the thing would be over even before the grave was done.
For an hour he worked. Off there at the edge of the desert, this grave levelled as a part of the cotton field—and no one would ever find it. His very bones seemed to sweat with horror. Was the American going to bury him alive? Or would he shoot him first?
All the stealth and cruelty he had ever felt toward others now turned in on himself, and a horror that filled him with blind, wild terror of that hollow grave shook him until he could no longer dig. He stood there in front of the flashlight blanched and shaking.